2 Peter 3

[Michael The Disciple]

Originally Posted by Esaias

I have studied prophecy, beginning in Genesis and moving forward. Including through the NT. As a result, your end times outlook just doesn't cut the mustard. For me, anyway. Your mileage may vary.

I don't think you have a solid base from which to even begin a study of prophecy. You say "Why not let Jesus teach us?" but you won't actually let Him do that, instead you want Him to teach you your version of post trib futurism.

It's been Biblically proven that "the coming of the Lord" and "the day of the Lord" do not necessarily always refer to what you think of as the Second Coming. So just because those phrases appear in a text doesn't mean it is always talking about the Second Advent.
your apparent refusal to acknowledge that reality renders your opinions on eschatology irrelevant to me.

Jesus taught many things about prophecy you clearly don't believe, because they don't fit your system. And, all your system REALLY amounts to is "at some point, some rough stuff will happen, it's just gonna get worse, so no need to make any efforts to do anything except wait to die." Literally, in PRACTICAL terms, no different than the rapture cult in it's actual effects.

Would your eschatology ever convince you to encourage young people to get married, and have as many children as possible, and work on building a better future for their grandkids? Or no?

So you assume I have not studied prophecy? When did you start studying it? I started in 1974. Now you may say that doesnt matter to which I would say why did you bring it up?

Would Jesus understand prophecy better than you and me? If there is prophecy we need to know and believe was he not able to present it himself? There is prophecy that may be irrelevant to the saints of God.

But what is relevant and essential for us to understand I believe Jesus taught us either himself or through his apostles. The Holy Spirit is able to condense and tie together anything and everything that is meant for us to know through Jesus Christ.

For prets, or historists, or whoever to think that ONLY THEY have perceived Biblical imagery or "spiritual" application to prophecy is ridiculous. As if others have not read the Old Testament as much (if not more) than they.

As to the day of the day of the Lord, the day of God, or the day of Christ, referring EXCLUSIVELY in the New Testament to the coming of Jesus for his people I have proved.

If you have a place in the New Testament where one of these phrases is NOT referring to the coming of Jesus for his people please post it. After all if I am saying something wrong I would not want to wreck my credibility by saying it again.

On the other hand if there were say one or two verses in the NT where the phrase "the day of Christ" WAS talking about his judgment coming apart from the resurrection of the dead and catching up of the saints how would that diminish the force and impact of lets say EIGHT verses that DID refer to that event?

Think for a minute. The scriptures were written in what we would consider a primitive time. We have various Old Testament prophets preaching about the day of the Lord. You and I can simply open the Bible and find all the references and study the events and analyze them.

In the early days of the New Testament Church and for some 1500 years after very, very, few believers would ever have the chance to do so. The great majority of believers could not read. There was no such thing as like we have today.

Bibles where we simply open and within a minute or two we are were we need to be. So down through the years those who did have some part of the texts didn't have the advantage of separation between chapters and numbered verses. So there were things we can see now that they (mostly) could not.

My point about the day of the Lord verses is not that they are not important. But in the cases where they were simply for events of things that have already passed they may not be relevant to the time Jesus spoke of when HE would come. We can learn spiritual truths from them. We can compare these things with truths from the New Testament.

However when the writers of the New Testament wrote what they did they had been TAUGHT BY JESUS and passed on to us that which was for his disciples. He apparantley wanted us when thinking of the "day of Christ" or the "day of the Lord" wanted us to think about the day of his coming for his people.

An example might be Moses and Elijah appearing in a vision to Jesus. Peter wanted to honor them as he did Christ. A cloud overshadowed them and the Spirit said "This is my Son, hear him'!

If Jesus points us to believe the day of Christ refers to his coming that should be our foremost focus on it.

Having established THAT understanding we have hope of understanding the time frame of his coming.